


With a Wimper

by TheDeanmon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Apocalypse, Bleak, Castiel is Alone, End of the World, Everyone is Dead, Heavy Angst, M/M, One Shot, Past Castiel/Dean Winchester, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 08:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20525003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDeanmon/pseuds/TheDeanmon
Summary: "The world had awakened to find a landscape painted in sepia. That was when Castiel had known that it wasn’t coming, it was here. The end. The real end. And the Winchesters weren’t around to stop it this time."It's the apocalypse, and Castiel is all alone.





	With a Wimper

It was the end of the world, and it was exactly how Castiel had expected it might be. The world around him was cold and the Sun was flickering which is a sight no one could describe. Because they didn’t have the words. Maybe because the words didn’t exist. If Castiel were to give it a time stamp, he would say that there was about a day before the Sun darkened forever and the world was enveloped in a crisp, unfathomable cold. Castiel had sensed it was coming for weeks now. It had begun with a change in the atmosphere, small enough that meteorologists and scientists could miss it. The horror hadn’t set in until the first day of muted sunshine - about three days ago. The world had awakened to find a landscape painted in sepia. That was when Castiel had known that it wasn’t coming, it was here. The end. The real end.

And the Winchesters weren’t around to stop it this time.

Castiel was standing in a desert in south France. In a location where a desert had not existed previously. It was an empty flat of land abandoned by every lifeform and organism in a 20 mile radius. The closest person was 26 miles west of his location. Their soul shone like a beacon. Panicked and golden. Castiel closed his eyes and focused on the sound of the wind. He pretended the whistling he heard was the voices of his brothers and sisters although he had lost contact to angel radio a few decades ago. He never thought he’d say that he missed it, but…

Castiel opened his eyes and he was in the presence of Fasil Ghebbi in Gondar, Ethiopia. He looked up at the large structure and breathed out softly, he would have loved to show it to Sam Winchester. It was the remains of Emperor Fasilides fortress, and it was beautiful and complexly intricate. He would have loved to see it. The city around Fasil Ghebbi was shambling, however. The destruction that befell Gondar had moved quickly with the onset of annihilation. If Castiel still believed in miracles, he would say that this was one, the fact that this fortress remained against all the terror the apocalypse promised. It was less a miracle and more dramatic irony Castiel decided. 

He left Ethiopia.

Castiel had trekked most of planet Earth in his long, ageless life, but he had never travelled to Antarctica. He hadn’t ever seen the point. Without humans, Earth was utterly unnecessary. Wasting his time on a continent without human life was out of the picture, so, he was shocked when he recognized that there was beauty around him. Even in the face of doomsday, the country was breathtakingly picturesque. White snow and navy seas collided in a wintery scene that denied the August date. The only downside was the absence of wildlife. Castiel debated staying. It would offer an interesting way to witness the fall of mankind. Castiel looked up to the sky as the Sun gasped out and the world was thrust into pitch. When it came back, Cas nodded.

He wasn’t surprised when he ended up in the bunker, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Castiel hadn’t stepped foot in the bunker in fifty-seven years. Before the Winchesters, that amount of time wasn’t even a blink. But with them, he had felt so secure and real that fifty-seven was a lifetime. Castiel remembered the exact moment he decided to leave the bunker. It was four years after Sam died of an unexpected and underwhelming heart attack, and seven after Dean went out in blaze of glory, just like he’d always wanted. It just got to be too much.

Castiel walked around the bunker slowly, hand gentle against everything he touched. He knew he was going to Dean’s room before he got there. He stopped outside the door, some part of his mind telling him, in vain, to knock. He opened the door but did not enter. It looked the same, but the smell was different. Musty. Less Dean, more mold. Castiel took a hesitant step inside, floorboard creaking under his weight. When he sat down on the bed, he felt heavier.

“Hello, Dean,” he said to no one. His voice was rough from being unused for so long - a year at least. He laid down on his back and stared up at the ceiling. He imagined Dean was laying beside him. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was living 64 years ago. Back when Dean was alive and well. He went to one of his favorite memories - one he hadn’t visited in quite a long time.

Dean was sitting on the edge of his bed cleaning his guns, and he lifted his head when Castiel knocked on the open door. He was older, coming up on his fiftieth birthday, and a bit softer around the eyes. He smiled when he saw Castiel, and it rose to his mouth in an instant. “Hey, Cas,” he greeted. Castiel answered, but he couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said. Dean had placed the gun he was working on down, and rose to his feet. He took Castiel by the shoulder and pulled him into a welcoming kiss. It had taken them sixteen years to get to the point where they could comfortably show their affection for each other, but now that they could, hardly a moment passed when they weren’t touching. “I love you,” Dean had murmured.

Castiel opened his eyes and was disappointed by the musty room he encountered. The look of the place wasn’t enough for him, just like it hadn’t been before. He got up from the bed and moved for the door, heat racking his body. He felt nauseous - which was a weird sensation - and he paused in the doorway.

The bunker wasn’t ever quiet. It was always buzzing with a faint electrical whir, and now that it was empty, the volume was exaggerated. In addition to that though, there was another noise. A deep noise that pulsed under Castiel’s skin. Unrecognizable. The building was roiling with a high pitched drone, but the epicenter seemed to be outside of the bunker. With a soft look over his shoulder, Castiel left the room, letting the door click behind him.

He took the stairs up to the front door two at a time, and placed his hand on the doorknob. There was bitter cold just on the other side. Castiel retracted his hand and glanced at it, wondering whether or not it was a hallucination brought on by high emotions. He opened the door with the opposite hand and was met with absolute darkness. It was immense and suffocating, and Castiel stared into it with an angry chill crawling over him. The world was dammed from the start, every angel was aware of this the moment Adam and Eve deviated. But the world didn’t deserve it. The people in the world didn’t deserve it. Castiel slammed the door shut and knelt his head on it. When he spoke, his words were heavy, “Dean,” he grumbled against the door, “I don’t know what to do.” Ocassionally he did this, spoke with Dean. It didn’t make sense for him to do so, Dean was long dead. He supposed that it was because a love that inimitable and secure was impossible to ignore or forget. No matter how much time passed.

Castiel straightened, smoothing his tie and squaring his shoulders. Sam and Dean wouldn’t let the world end. Not without a fight at least. Castiel went to the armory and stood in the middle of the room looking around. What could you grab to stop the apocalypse? He looked around for a few moments and then shook his head and focused on New York City. It was bustling, just as it had been the other times Castiel had been. This sort of chaos, however, was panicked and hurried. The sun had gone out, and despite the absence of solar light, headlights blared. The horror came from the realization that it was three in the afternoon. Castiel couldn’t stop the end of days. He didn’t possess that power, and, besides, this apocalypse wasn’t his brothers fighting. It was the sun dying, and the breathable atmosphere was soon to follow. What Castiel could do though, was send calm to the people around him. He had always been a gifted healer - he liked to imagine it was because of his love for humanity.

He extended a hand to a blonde woman next to him who was yelling frantically into a cellphone. His fingers lightly brushed her elbow, and he focused on pushing peaceful energy into her heart and mind. He felt it pulse and fill in her chest and infest her whole body. She slackened, her mouth closing and eyes falling shut. She spoke into the phone gently. She whispered an “I love you,” and glanced at Castiel. He nodded at her and started walking. He walked for a few blocks, soothing the people he came to and then he left.

He visited eighty more countries before the atmosphere collapsed, and within those countries, he went to multiple cities. He spread a tranquil and healing energy to as many people as he could. There was no way he could console everyone, but he did what he could before people began to die. When Castiel felt death happen in droves, he went back to the bunker and waited for the inevitable. When enough of the world had been extinguished, every angel would be called back to Heaven and given new instruction.

The bunker was cold and dark and unwelcoming. The comfortable buzz of electricity had disappeared and it seemed every security and power system had failed. In spite of all this, it still felt more like home than anywhere else. Castiel sat down at a large table in the war room and clasped his hands. He didn’t cry, he didn’t pray. He just sat and waited. He pretended Dean was alive, waiting in his room for Castiel to come in and lay with him. He imagined Sam was asleep in bed. He tried to picture them getting up in the morning and driving to someplace else. Somewhere the world wasn’t ending. Where they could exterminate a threat and come home to celebrate.

Castiel sat at the table, eyes closed and head down, and he felt the world die.


End file.
